25 Feb 05 San Antonio TX to Lake Charles LA Trip Report
My son Brian (VStar 650) and myself (R1100RT) went up to Lake Charles via stop
in Houston TX. Wife and her sister traveled up in tundra. Programmed Garmin 2610
GPS with to stop near Bush Airport in Houston then to go down to Toyota
convention center and over to "Ragun Cajin". I also picked up Michael
Tobler's (mjt) email from my companies Spam drop and make a note of his phone
number, thinking I might call about noon when we got downtown Houston. Nothing
went right from even before we left. More pictures are here http://tinyurl.com/4drrc
Son Brian let his license expire, discovered that Thursday, and Virginia at
Dairyland faxed some paper he needed and he went down to DPS but they
complained the color had to be "pink". Friday morning, instead of
leaving for Houston, we drove up to Spring Branch and saw Virginia of Dairyland
fame (really boondocks - she can plink and hunt from her back window). Brian
saw a cute redhead there, but the older granny was the one who got him the
original pink slip that DPS needed.
Anyway we finally got his MC license fixed up by 2pm and we left. Wife
and her sister had already left as they were going to the Benny Hinn thing at
the Toyota center.
Our first stop was at Schulenburg to load up on world famous Oakridge
smokehouse beef jerky. It was coats and helmets the rest of the way as it
had gotten cold. We hit Houston during rush hour and the GPS sent us thru all
the toll roads, $1.25 per axel. I lost $5 when the wind blew it out of my hand
at the last toll and we just rode thru since we didn't have any small change.
It was dark when we got to Bush airport and the guy selling his motorcycle gear
had gone home . We called him up and got his home address, programmed it into
the GPS and headed out to Kirkland to pick up the items we had bought over the
internet.
We got into Kirkland, located the sellers house. It took two of us to lift the
motorcycle jack onto the back of my R1100RT. I remember taking heavier stuff
before but could not remember when. The one year old Shoei Helmet looked good and we
bought a 2nd, but older Shoei for $10 and a pair of imported boots for $40. He
told us how his bike was wreaked and his arm broke when a cage pulled out in
front of him. I was thankful it was dark and no one would see the huge jack
strapped to the back of my bike. We then headed to the Toyota center to find my
wife's pickup. At least the jack didn’t
wiggle.
We passed within 100ft of the Toyota center from the highway, but is seemed
like another 10 miles before the next exit and we got lost tracking back thru
downtown. Brian stopped a homeless guy who wanted $1 for where the Toyota
center was and we finally got there. We parked and got off and were immediately
propositioned by 4 girls who walked over to the bikes. The one who did the
talking was tall, good looking, and didn't have any gold teeth. If they were at
that Benny Hinn thing, what he said went in one ear and out the other.
The wife spotted us and I was glad to load the motorcycle jack into the pickup.
We transferred the GPS and I programmed it for the ragun cajun but we never
located that restaurant. We gave up after about an hour or more and stopped at
the spaghetti warehouse on Travis & commerce street. The food was no good,
they were out of lemons for the water, and they could not find olive oil to
dunk the bread in, substituting veggie oil. It was too late to call Michael or
any of the Houston area bikers and we left for Lake Charles about 11 pm.
It was cold all the way, Brian swapped his open face helmet for the full Shoei
we had just bought. As soon as we passed into LA the road went bad. A jar every
100ft or so with a really bad one now and then to where you had to keep both
hands on the handlebars as you could not tell in advance which one was going to
be the bad one. We found later that if we had moved to the left lane the road
would have been smoother.
The next day we all went to Steamboat Bill's for soft crab and crayfish. We then
had to check into another hotel as Harrods's was full and didn't have a
Saturday night room.
We moved to "America Best" which had a shuttle
to Harrods. The wife, her sister and Brian left for Harrods's casino but I
slept late and caught up with them about 2 hours later. When I found them they
were just leaving as there was a dispute. Brian loaned his aunt his last $10
and she hit a jackpot and wouldn't share. She gave him a cash out ticket but
when he went to collect it they were all nickels and she had been on the $1
machine. Then she claimed she had left her gambling card in the machine and
when she go
t back from the bathroom it was missing. However, she had two of them on her neck
so it was clear she had hers plus somebody else's. Brian said she was hiding
the large cash out ticket in her sock and this is what they were arguing about
when I found them. We want back to the hotel and this was the first gambling
trip that I never gambled on.
Every biker we saw yelled as us to put helmets on so we obliged. Sunday morning
it was raining when we left, really cold with the streets slippery. It warmed
up by the time we got to Houston. A really bad accident forced us off the GPS
route as the highway was closed but we managed to find our way and didn't pass
thru any toll roads. From Schulenburg to San Antonio it was cold and dark.
Fortunately there was no wildlife as it would be difficult to spot a deer at
night with little or no traffic to light the road up.